Centurion, 13 February 2019 – AFGRI Technology Services (“ATS”), which focuses on the development and implementation of agricultural technology (“AgTech”) solutions, will be partnering with the University of Pretoria’s (“UP”) TuksNovation to foster innovation in the agricultural sector.

TuksNovation, a non-profit company founded by UP in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Small Business, is a technology business incubator and accelerator providing specialised product and business development support to tech start-ups.

ATS has partnered with TuksNovation for its annual Activate Competition, which searches for cutting-edge and innovative technologies and start-ups that can be grown into successful businesses.

“The objective of the competition is to identify potentially profitable technologies and disruptive start-ups for Virtual Incubation and Acceleration, with the intention of building AFGRI’s innovation capacity and to foster support for and growth of South Africa’s entrepreneurs,” says ATS MD, Niki Neumann.

The competition is open primarily to UP and Gordon Institute of Business Science (“GIBS”) students, as well as academic staff and alumni. “ATS will be actively participating in the competition by helping to validate entry concepts and providing a degree of mentoring to relevant start-ups in the Fintech, FoodTech and AgTech spaces.”

Neumann says that the ATS team is very excited at the opportunity to get involved with TuksNovation, which not only offers the company access to a pipeline of top technology start-ups to partner with, but also allows ATS to take another step forward in supporting the entrepreneurial and SME innovation community in South Africa.

She adds that the partnership fully supports ATS’ desire to advance the development and implementation of agricultural technology solutions that will help drive the future of agriculture and enable food security.

“By supporting TuksNovation, we further our vision of bringing together the greatest minds, technology and products to be the catalyst of innovation and technology-enabled solutions to drive sustainable agricultural growth across the African and global agricultural value chains.”